Tipping points: How do we know when we are tripping?

William P. Hall on March 28, 2022

The idea of a ‘tipping point’ is more than academic. Once you trip over it you are on a downhill slide towards Hell at the bottom of the hill

Fig. 2 from the research paper by Beringer et al., 22/03/2022 in Global Change Biology – Bridge to the future: Important lessons from 20 years of ecosystem observations made by the OzFlux network.
Summary of the significant scientific and technical outcomes from the OzFlux network after two decades: Blue relates to discovery, information and knowledge outcomes; grey outcomes relate to assessments across site, regional and global scales; yellow refers to the capacity building outcomes for researchers and green indicates technical outcomes for observations and modelling.

by Caitlin Moore et al., 25/03/2022 in The Conversation

In 20 years of studying how ecosystems absorb carbon, here’s why we’re worried about a tipping point of collapse

From rainforests to savannas, ecosystems on land absorb almost 30% of the carbon dioxide human activities release into the atmosphere. These ecosystems are critical to stop the planet warming beyond 1.5℃ this century – but climate change may be weakening their capacity to offset global emissions.

This is a key issue that OzFlux, a research network from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, has been investigating for the past 20 years….

The biggest absorbers of atmospheric carbon dioxide in Australia are savannas and temperate forests…. as effects of climate change intensify, ecosystems such as these are at risk of reaching tipping points of collapse.

Read the complete article….

Featured image: Shutterstock from the featured article.

Views expressed in this post are those of its author(s), not necessarily all Vote Climate One members.

More wildfires in sub-arctic forests heat up our Earth

Climate News Links on March 27, 2022

conditions conducive to higher frequency fires. In the coniferous boreal forest, the world’s largest terrestrial biome, fires are historically common but relatively infrequent. Post-fire, regenerating forests are generally resistant to burning (strong fire self-regulation), favoring millennial coniferous resilience. However, short intervals between fires are associated with rapid, threshold-like losses of resilience and changes to broadleaf or shrub communities, impacting carbon content, habitat, and other ecosystem services.

by Buma et al., 22/03/2022 in Scientific Reports

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Antarctic ice shelf collapsed by recent NB4 heat spike

Climate News Links on March 26, 2022

Satellite imagery shows last week’s unimaginable high temperature spike in East Antarctica has fueled the collapse of at least one ice shelf

Satellite data shows the Conger ice shelf has broken off iceberg C-38 and collapsed in Antartica. Photograph: USNIC (From the article)

by Donna Lu, 25/03/2022 in The Guardian

Satellite data shows entire Conger ice shelf has collapsed in Antarctica: Nasa scientist says complete collapse of ice shelf as big as Rome during unusually high temperatures is ‘sign of what might be coming’

Featured Image: Sketch of the Antarctic coast with glaciological and oceanographic processes. 7 April 2000. / Author: Hannes Grobe, Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Bremerhaven, Germany via Wikimedia / Permission: Own work, share alike, attribution required (Creative Commons CC-BY-SA-2.5)

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Expert explains NB4 polar temperature extremes

Climate News Links on March 26, 2022

Yale Climate Connections‘ Bob Hensen discusses and explains the unimaginable heat episodes observed at in north and south polar regions

A research caravan seen from above by a research drone in early 2020 on the East Antarctic Plateau south of Concordia Station. Concordia recorded its highest temperature in more than 15 years of data collection on March 18, 2022 – a date when temperatures are normally closer to their winter lows than summer highs. (Image credit: Pete Akers via Article)

by Bob Hensen, 23/03/2022 in Yale Climate Connections

How this month produced a mind-boggling warm-up in eastern Antarctica (and the Arctic): Two atmospheric rivers surge toward opposite poles:

The bloodless term “anomaly” doesn’t do justice to the stupendous temperature departures seen across parts of both the Antarctic and Arctic in mid-March 2022. With the initial shock now behind them, scientists are taking stock of exactly what happened and what it might portend.

Read the complete article….

Featured image: The high temperature at Concordia Station, Antarctica, on March 18, 2022, soared above any temperature on record, even from midsummer, in data going back to 2013. (Image credit: Eric Lagadec, via ASTEP from the Article).

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Global warming acceleration makes El Niño more lethal

Climate News Links on March 25, 2022

Studies show that global warming ramps up El Niño to intensify dangerous weather extremes to create more extensive human suffering

Crew members land a boat in front of residential homes after surveying floodwaters in Windsor on March 9, 2022 during flooding in Sydney, Australia. Credit: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images (via Article)

Shifts in El Niño May Be Driving Climates Extremes in Both Hemispheres: Global warming is shifting cyclical temperature swings in the Pacific Ocean, and that affects floods in Australia, fires in South America and even temperature in the polar regions.

Editors note: A source article, Increased ENSO sea surface temperature variability under four IPCC emission scenarios, by Cai et al., 31/01/2022 in Nature Climate Change may be downloaded by clicking the link.

Featured Image: Stronger ENSO, stronger impacts / Source: NOAA and Paul Horn / from the Article https://insideclimatenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/LaNin%CC%83aWorldImpactENSO750px.png

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A massive IPCC report out soon – What can we do?

Climate News Links on March 25, 2022

Representatives of most nations of the world are now sign-off on the overview of IPCC’s Mitigation of Climate Change report due out April 4.

Current carbon-cutting commitments still put us on a catastrophic path toward 2.7C of warming by 2100. (From the article)

by Amélie Bottollier-Depois, 18/03/2022 in PhysOrg

UN report to lay out options to halt climate crisis: Nearly 200 nations gather on Monday to confront a question that will outlive Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: how do we stop carbon pollution overheating the planet and threatening life as we know it?

Featured image: AR6 Climate Change 2022 Mitigation of Climate Change — IPCC / via https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-group-3/

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True? Murdoch’s ‘news’ media now support net zero

Climate News Links on March 25, 2022

Victoria Fielding suggests that if Murdoch is supporting action on the climate emergency with people like Chris Kenny and Andrew Bolt, who needs enemies

Jason O’Brien/AAP, from the Conversation article

by Victoria Fielding, 25/03/2022 in The Conversation

Is News Corp following through on its climate change backflip? My analysis of its flood coverage suggests not: Several months ago, Australia’s Murdoch media news outlets launched a new climate change campaign advocating a path toward net-zero emissions by 2050. The launch included a 16-page wraparound supplement in all of its tabloids supporting the need for climate action.

Featured Image: Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, News Corporation, USA and Co-Chair, Annual Meeting 2009./ Source: originally posted to Flickr as Rupert Murdoch via Wikimedia / Author: World Economic Forum / License: licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

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Wildfire smoke drives global temperatures higher

Climate News Links on March 22, 2022

‘Brown carbon’ from burning forests, tundra, and peat soils drives temperatures higher in positive feedback loop with increasing global temps

Taken by NASA’s Aqua satellite on January 4, 2021, this image shows smoke from fires burning in southeastern Australia. NASA says it is likely that some of the white patches above the smoke are pyrocumulonimbus clouds, which resemble violent thunderstorms and can form above intense fires. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens. Picture via Australia’s “firenadoes” summon images of Hiroshima, atomic bombs By Dawn Stover | January 14, 2020 in Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

Source: Cell Press, 18/03/2022 in Science News

Wildfires devastate the land they burn, and they are also warming the planet: The 2021 wildfire season broke records globally, leaving land charred from California to Siberia. The risk of fire is growing, and a recent report warned that wildfires are on track to increase 50% by 2050. These fires destroy homes, plant life, and animals as they burn, but the risk doesn’t stop there. Researchers detail how the brown carbon released by burning biomass in the northern hemisphere is accelerating warming in the Arctic and warn that this could lead to even more wildfires in the future.

Editor’s note: the source article, by Yue et al., 18/03/2022, Brown carbon from biomass burning imposes strong circum-Arctic warming can be downloaded from One Earth.

Featured Image: Several wildfires in the Sakha Republic, in and around the Arctic Circle, Russia (Lat: 66.88913, Long: 150.72075) – July 20, 2020 – Enhanced natural colors with IR overlay – Contains modified Copernicus Sentinel data [2020], processed by Pierre Markuse – Image is about 77 km wide. / Downloaded from Flikr

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Can the Great Barrier Reef survive global warming?

Climate News Links on March 22, 2022

If the ocean becomes too hot, coral can’t do much to escape the heat. Loss of our natural wonder is likely if warming is not stopped.

Grumpy Turtle Films, Author provided

by Jodie L. Rummer & Scott F. Heron, 21/03/2022 in The Conversation

Adapt, move, or die: repeated coral bleaching leaves wildlife on the Great Barrier Reef with few options: To our horror, another mass coral bleaching event may be striking the Great Barrier Reef, with water temperatures reaching up to 3℃ higher than average in some places. This would be the sixth such event since the late 1990s, and the fourth since 2016.

Featured Image: Great Barrier Reef, Australia. From the article, (undated) by Adele Pedder, “Protecting the Coral Sea-the Cradle to the Great Barrier Reef” in The UN Chronicle. Shows a healthy reef populated by many different animals from corals to fish.

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Extreme Antarctic heat is NB4 for any time of year!

Climate News Links on March 22, 2022

38 °C above normal for any day of any year is a Never Before (NB4) extreme temp for Antarctica. Increasing number of NB4s says worse to come!

Featured Image: Antarctic temperature anomalies on 17/03/2022. Generated by William Hall, on Climate Reanalyzer on 22/03/2022.

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